It's been quite a while since I've been on Animal Acts. This evening when I went and did a lap I found that there has been a lot of dirt dug out from below the problem. Also, lots of stones that appear to have been dug up are piled up as a sort of perimeter fence.
Here's a crappy shot of the excavations. It's not clear from this photo that the ground has been dug out, but it has.

And the stones piled up.

Anyone know what's going on here? I'm not sure whether someone has thought this was a good spot to dig out for a bivvy or they want more space for their bum to swing when trying the low problem.
Whatever the reason, it's really disappointing and amounts to vandalism in my book.

Unfortunately, Kieran, this type of thing is happening at bouldering areas all over the place.

I got down on my hands and knees and cleared up cigarette butts and finger tape from Lindfield on Saturday morning and had a litter collection on the way out of the Frontline on Sunday morning.

Whereas in the past many boulderers had some sort of affinity with the outdoors, it now seems that this is no longer the case for many people. Symptoms associated with this new type of person include the plastering of holds with chalk, covering problems with tick marks, gang-banging problems with 5 of your mates (much easier than working it out for yourself), power-screaming, discarding rubbish, adapting the outdoors to suit your convenience, videoing yourself for upload to U-tube and spraying about 'crushing' or 'cruising' problems.

(Sorry, I'm in a bad mood this morning and I am old and grumpy at the best of times.)

Unfortunately, bouldering is accessible and guidebooks (complete with nice big white lines right down the centre of a photopgraph of the problem) have the effect of popularising bouldering and bouldering areas. Please don't anybody publish any more bouldering guides. Or if you have to, put it somewhere obscure on the web with hard-to-follow directions.

I am not the tall person, however, I know the short person who did this. He spent a tonne of time on that boulder and was very innocently just trying to improve the landing for everyone. He certainly wasn't try to make some contrived lowball less of a bum drag.

On 12/06/2012 egosan wrote:>I am not the tall person, however, I know the short person who did this.>He spent a tonne of time on that boulder and was very innocently just trying>to improve the landing for everyone. He certainly wasn't try to make some>contrived lowball less of a bum drag.>>
Trying to improve the landing! It's a traverse where you can step off at any point. It must have been one of the safest landings at Arapiles. Why on earth did he feel it needed modifying? Had he never heard of using a pad?
I'd suggest he goes back and fills it in but the damage is already done.

There was a visiting climber who, for reasons that escape me, was really into doing laps on Animal Acts. He probably did this over a 3 month period while he was resting between laps. Piling the rocks up neatly like that was probably the biggest bit of the mistake as it makes it extremely obvious that pebble shuffling has been done. Personally I would never have bothered with Animal Acts, the landing was, pretty reasonable and I cant imagine why anyone would want to climb it more than once but I have definitely moved stones I thought I might break an ankle on out from underneath boulders I thought I might fall off of. To me its a lesser environmental sin than placing a bolt....Roughly on par with building a cairn.

Given the current state of affairs, and the fact that said climber is no longer here, would you recommend throwing the rocks back under the boulder problem or scattering them down the hill?

On 13/06/2012 IdratherbeclimbingM9 wrote:>On 12/06/2012 Eduardo Slabofvic. wrote:>>Maybe M69ersiswhatstugangwants can use his search skills to locate the>>post, then we'll all know who to villify>>He might need it, but won't get it from me, as I am not that sort of guy!

At least there is a nice pile of stones at the ready for the angry mob to use in the stoning...

On 13/06/2012 uwhp510 wrote:>I heard that the guy who did this once top-roped a climb at Shitley...>straight... off... the... ring......>>>>>>... bolts.>
I heard he was one of the gunmen on the grassy knoll!?! This unmasked antagonist's conduct is clearly a case of moral turpitude! As per ES's comments, at least the rocks for the stoning are neat and easily accessible;)